Electromagnetic (EM) radiation attenuating technology is useful for a wide variety of military and civilian applications ranging from minimizing the Radar signature of a target to EM shielding in consumer electronics. EMI (Electromagnetic Interference) shielding of electronic systems to decrease susceptibility to, and radiation from, EM sources is increasingly important in both civilian and military applications—perhaps particularly at the radio to microwave wavelengths. The usual shielding techniques focus on the use of metals and their composites. Such materials provide shielding due to their conductivity, but they have the disadvantages of heavy weight, limited flexibility and difficulty of matching attenuation requirements with packaging constraints.
Kuznetsov et al. discovered that the annealing of nano-diamonds (with diameters of 2-5 nm) results in the formation of Onion-Like Carbon (OLC) particles with a structure of concentric carbon shells having various defects in the shell structures. This work is described in Russian Patent document 2094370, which is hereby incorporated by reference.